


Time In Between

by sterlinglee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Datekou, Gen, Post-Inter-High, third-year retirement blues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3116372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>Datekou's retired third-years nonsense-talk their way through disappointment towards the fast-approaching future (there comes a time when you have to leave it at the last word and keep on moving).</p>
<p>
  <em>“Too heavy for this time of day, captain,” Sasaya said.  “Not to mention the season.  Be a little cheerful, it’s summer.”  His voice was tight.  Moniwa twiddled his paper spear.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Sorry,” he said.</em>
  <br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Time In Between

The last bell rang, startling Moniwa a little, but after the first jolt all he felt was relief. It had been a long day, and last night’s lack of sleep was catching up with him. He got to his feet slowly in the rush and bustle of his classmates and saw Kamasaki with his head down on his desk, breathing slow and even.  
  
Sasaya got there first, and flicked Kamasaki’s ear two or three times with an air of studious interest.  
  
“Day’s a-wasting,” he deadpanned. “I mean, we can leave you here.” Kamasaki whacked him in the stomach without raising his head.  
  
“Been wasting it on purpose,” he grunted from the cave of his pillowed arms.  
  
At some point they had become the only students in the room. Up front the teacher was shuffling papers, briefcase, water bottle, as she tried to get a hand on the doorknob. Almost automatically Moniwa went up and opened it for her. Then it was just the three of them.  
  
Yesterday they had lost to Karasuno in the Inter-High preliminaries. They had not known which practice would be their last until the deciding match.  
  
Afternoon light, slow and golden, slanted in through the windows under the half-mast blinds. The courtyard below them was filling up with students heading to cars or the main gate or the practice fields. Kamasaki stood up with a jerk, chair legs scraping the floor.  
  
“You guys gonna just stand there until it gets dark?” he said. It came out rougher than he meant it. “There’s wasting time and then there’s fucking—wasting time.”  
  
They stood in a circle looking at one another for a moment. Then Kamasaki shrugged, looking embarrassed, and Sasaya bumped his shoulder. Moniwa relaxed enough to take his eyes off his friends and check his phone.  
  
“Let’s go get something to eat,” he offered. “I mean—as long as you guys don’t have anything—”  
  
“I have a job interview in two hours,” Sasaya said, after a pause. His dark eyes skidded off to the corner of the room and then back. “…I can make it. Let’s go.”  
  
Heading out into the hall and down the stairs, they shuffled positions and fell into the three-abreast arrangement that came naturally now, after a few years to teach them each where they belonged. Moniwa and Sasaya went along and let Kamasaki set the pace—he never seemed to have noticed it himself, but he was always happier as the central body to their quieter orbit. Sasaya yawned and slung his arms up over his head, his spine popping. Kamasaki, probably taking it as a challenge, cracked his neck and his knuckles idly.  
  
“That’s gross,” Moniwa and Sasaya told him in unison, because that was the way they’d done it the last thousand times too.  
  
“Awh, piss off,” Kamasaki said, almost good-naturedly, then popped his knuckles one last time and took off his tie, stuffing it in his backpack with his blazer. Sasaya thrust an invisible microphone under Moniwa’s nose.  
  
“Moniwa Kaname, we’ll have your final answer now,” he intoned. They passed the woodshop and turned a corner. “Sleeves or top buttons, what will he go for next? Remember, you can only make one guess.”  
  
Moniwa hummed thoughtfully. “Can I make an outside call on this one?” Kamasaki rolled his eyes and untucked his shirt instead.  
  
“I vote we go for ramen, or else burgers,” he said. “Also, Sasaya’s a clown.”  
  
“He who calls others a clown is a mouth-breathing clown himself and should grow the fuck up,” Sasaya said amiably. They turned a corner and came to the lower level door that led outside. Kamasaki cracked his knuckles again, nervously. After a moment Moniwa pushed it open and led them through.  
  
“The way through the machine shop is shorter,” Kamasaki said in the brief silence that followed, as they looked across the walkway at the gym. The basketball team was doing footwork drills under the high crossbeamed ceiling, and the lights made the amber floor shine like a stage.  
  
“It is?” Moniwa said distantly. “Well—I guess.”  
  
He went out anyway, and they followed him across the walkway and onto the field that was crisp and dry with the heat of the season. The earth was crumbly underfoot. They came around the school building to the courtyard and passed silently through the main gate. The broad road was in front of them—they jostled playfully on the sidewalk to distract themselves from the size of it and the way it seemed not to end but to keep on winding away through town and along the mountains and then—where?  
  
Kamasaki made a dissatisfied noise and picked up his pace. “What do you wanna bet Futakuchi comes crawling along in the next couple weeks all “oh senpai help me get a muzzle on fucking Kogane, he followed me back to my place and he’s gonna eat me out of house and home,’” he said after a while. “I’d pay to see him grovel a little.”  
  
“Who does feed Kogane,” Sasaya mused. He didn’t sound like his heart was in the joke. “Good question. But if Futakuchi comes and outright says he needs help you can take me for everything I own.”  
  
“Mean,” Moniwa chided easily, bumping Kamasaki. “And, you know. If he came to any of us for help it wouldn’t be you.”  
  
Kamasaki spread his arms. “’Course not,” he said. “And if I’m mean it’s ‘cause you can’t expect me to be as nice as you when I’m hungry. Buy me something to eat and you’ll think I’m a feathery damn angel, all right? Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. Et cetera.”  
  
“If you knew what they feed Kogane on you’d be all over it, goodwill toward men whatever,” Moniwa said. Sasaya snorted, and Kamasaki walked a few more paces with his arms spread before dropping them.  
  
Moniwa found a loose chunk of asphalt and kicked it along the road until it skittered out of reach. They turned the corner and the Mos Burger sign came into view, and he steered them toward it.  
  
“I don't remember us saying we were doing Mos Burger,” Kamasaki grumbled, more for the look of it than anything else.  
  
“If we don't we’re going to walk until we end up in Sendai,” Moniwa said wearily. “And anyway I’m paying, so don’t complain about the sauce, all right?” They followed him in and made their orders, and went to one of the booths at the back window. Sasaya popped the cap off his cold barley tea and spun it like a top on the linoleum table. Moniwa twisted the receipt into a thin white spear. They sat in silence for two and a half minutes.  
  
“This sucks ass,” Kamasaki said abruptly in a low hard voice. “This sucks so much ass, you know? We almost had it.”  
  
The tall windows of the Mos Burger had no blinds. The light was low and it pierced down along the horizon, orange and white, hitting Moniwa right in the eyes. He slid down a little in his seat beside Kamasaki and leaned a shading hand against his forehead, squinting. Sasaya read the ingredients on his bottle and pretended not to have heard anything.  
  
“I don’t know if we did,” Moniwa admitted finally. He had wanted to say it for some time now. “We had a chance, but—almost?” Kamasaki shifted in the booth to stare at him. His face was hard to discern, angles and shadows made inhospitable by the orange light.  
  
“Guys,” came Sasaya’s low murmur of warning. Kamasaki slapped a hand down on the table like he might jump up and start to shout.  
“You can’t know that,” was all he said in the end.  
  
“Karasuno was something new, we couldn’t have planned for that. But Seijou? Shiratorizawa? Didn’t we always know what they could do?” Moniwa had meant to sound calm and reasonable but the words surprised him on their way out. He shut his eyes for a few seconds and looked at the red-orange burn behind his eyelids. “We had a chance, that’s all. Probably everybody has a chance if you look at it right.”  
  
Sasaya threw back his head and took a loud gulp of tea, and Kamasaki grew tense, still staring at Moniwa.  
  
“Too heavy for this time of day, captain,” Sasaya said. “Not to mention the season. Be a little cheerful, it’s summer.” His voice was tight. Moniwa twiddled his paper spear.  
  
“Sorry,” he said.  
  
They waited for their order to be called. Gradually Kamasaki stopping clinging to the table, and when Sasaya offered him the bottle of tea for a sip he sniffed and made an exaggerated face, hamming it up so Sasaya could relax.  
  
Moniwa motioned for the tea even though he didn’t really want any. “Really I’m sorry, though. That wasn’t fair of me.”  
  
“That’s right, Captain, be fair,” Sasaya said gently, handing him the bottle. Moniwa took a swig and bent his paper spear stabbing it at the flecked surface of the table.  
  
“Aren’t I the one treating you guys? Don’t tell me about fair,” he said, starting to smile despite himself.  
  
Sasaya reached and spun the tea bottle against his fingertips to snag it back, then raised it in a toast and drained it. “You think I’d know fair? I have a job interview in an hour and a half. I could be a programming intern by next week and if that’s not punishment for what I did in my past life, what is?”  
  
Kamasaki snorted. “We’ll just assume you were a weird son of a mother in your past life too. Spin it any way you probably deserve it. That’s as good as fair.”  
  
The cashier tapped the microphone and called their order number. Kamasaki got up and let Moniwa out of the booth, and stood leaning against it until he came back with the red plastic tray in his hands. They sorted out their food and Moniwa tucked his wrapper back neatly from his teriyaki burger.  
  
Kamasaki bit in like he was taking revenge. Sasaya went carefully through his usual preparations, which involved unwrapping the burger all the way, taking off the top bun so he could replace it straight, and emptying everyone’s sauce packets onto his wrapper for dipping. Moniwa folded wax paper and foil, tucked tiny corners back, fiddled and creased and finally realized he was stalling. He began to eat.  
  
He was hungrier than he had thought. He rested his elbows on the table like Kamasaki, and after a moment Sasaya followed suit. The three of them ate rapidly in silence, licking their fingers and crinkling greasy wrappers and shoving napkins toward each other when things started to drip. Moniwa had been starving. He hadn't known it but he’d been starving. Sasaya ripped open the packet of pickled vegetables that came with his burger and spread them under the meat. Kamasaki pushed the last of his bun into his mouth with one hand and dabbed crumbs from the wrapper with the other.  
  
Moniwa wolfed his burger with his head held low. He couldn’t stand to look at anything else right now. None of them were used to eating this early in the day—wasn’t there somewhere else they should be? He squashed up his wrapper with sudden force and took a napkin to scrub the grease off his fingers. His face was hot. When he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to embarrass himself he looked up again.  
  
Kamasaki was drumming his fingers along the tabletop in an obnoxious rapid rhythm, and Sasaya was staring out the window. He looked tired. Kamasaki shuffled around abruptly and began eyeing the menu like he wanted seconds.  
  
“Piss, you said it right,” Moniwa muttered, drawing their surprised glances. “Everything’s ended and starting now.” They waited. He cleared his throat, announced, “I said, you said it. We had our fair chance and we blew it, and it sucks ass.”  
  
Sasaya raised an eyebrow. Moniwa wagged the bent paper spear in his direction. “There,” he told them. “That’s your captain’s final answer. Sound fair to you?”  
  
They sat still in the booth like bugs in the amber light of the going day. Kamasaki cracked a grin, Sasaya a crooked curve of the lips that made his eyes go sleepy—at least sleepier.  
  
“Fair is as fair does,” Sasaya said. “Sounds angelic to me.”  
  
Moniwa felt something inside stop spinning and settle. He put on his best TV voice. “Liftoff in ten, guys. Peace on Earth, Captain over and out.”  
  
“Listen to yourselves,” Kamasaki said, trying and failing to sound disgusted as Moniwa slid the rest of the way down in his seat, laughing. Sasaya closed his eyes, still smiling. “Wasting this kinda time—don’t you clowns have somewhere to be?”  


**Author's Note:**

> a variation on that scene where karasuno has dinner together after losing to seijou. only worse, because it's about fast food and the terror of adulthood and kamasaki yasushi making fun of people because he is too much of a weenie to admit he's sad


End file.
